How to make life more worth living when you're a teen, a freak, or any other kind of outlaw. I've been a lot of all of those, and I managed to stay alive. The whole story is in my memoir, "A Queer and Pleasant Danger: the true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology, and leaves 12 years later to become the lovely lady she is today."

Bring Kate to Your Town

Bring Kate to Your Town

To bring Kate to your school or town for a performance, workshop, lecture, or all of the above, please send an email to the following address. PLEASE do not use this email for personal correspondence. It will not be answered. This address is only for booking touring engagements: katebornstein at earthlink dot net. Twitter is still the best way to reach Kate for any personal reason.

July 09, 2008

WALL•E: A Butch/Femme Love Story... or Silly Rabbit! Robots Have No Gender

I’m completely smitten with WALL•E, this summer’s Pixar/Disney offering. But the last thing I expected to see in my friendly, heterosexual upper east side Manhattan neighborhood movie theater was a feature length cartoon about a pair of lesbian robots who fall madly in love with each other. WALL•E is nothing short of hot, dyke Sci Fi action romance, some seven hundred years in the future! Woo-hoo!

Isn’t that what you saw?
No? What movie were you watching?

Did you see a heterosexual boy robot fall in love with a heterosexual girl robot? I did… at first. And it makes sense how someone could assume that. I mean, WALL•E is a sweet little guy, right? He’s all, “gosh, shucks,” and shy around girls... a real warm-hearted guy, right? And Eve! Is she adorably hot, or what?! She could be Honey West, Emma Peel, or your favorite Charlie’s Angel. So, agreed: when I first saw the film, I saw a boy robot and girl robot. My question is this: how and why did most of us jump to that conclusion?

Is it because of their names? The names sound like Wally and Eve, but their names are very specifically WALL•E and EVE, all in capital letters—because both names are acronyms for each robot’s prime directive and function. Nothing to do with boy or girl there.

The film makers take a great deal of care in pointing out that WALL•E and EVE’s notion of butch/femme romance is based in the world and culture of Hello, Dolly.That’s supposed to be a cue for the audience to believe they’re a “healthy” heterosexual male and female couple. But it’s not proof that they are male or female. And anyway, how camp is Hello, Dolly!?

Is it that simply by looking at the robots, we can tell that WALL•E’s a boy and EVE is a girl? What was it up on that screen that defined the robots’ gender? Both robots were naked, so we could see their entire anatomy, right? Neither of those robots had a vagina or a penis. Did you see one or the other? Neither robot was sporting an Adam’s apple. Neither EVE nor WALL•E flashed any tit that I could see. So, we’ve got no way to spot those robots as male or female by using secondary sex characteristics. But still, most of us would swear on a stack of holy bibles or holy Gender Trouble that those robots are male and female. How did we most of us come to agree on that?

Both EVE and WALL•E have cute little storage compartments right where their internal reproductive organs would’ve been had they been human. I’m guessing neither robot has a DNA strand, so there is no way to type them by XX or XY—not to mention the over a dozen more X, Y, and O chromosome combinations that determine any of the fifteen human genders found in human nature. So it’s not sperms and eggs nor X’s and Y’s that are making EVE a female and WALL•E a male. Barring hormones—which I didn’t get a whiff of during the entire film—that just about exhausts the physiological basis for determining gender.

Pixar and Disney made a great many anatomical choices when they designed EVE and WALL•E to be as close to human as they can possibly be and still be robots. They didn’t give us one single anatomical clue to the gender of these cute li’l robots, but they knew we’d see WALL•E as boy and EVE as girl. Both of ‘em are gosh-darned CUTE, right? Oh, come on. You know they’re SO adorable, right? How can they be that in nearly everyone’s eyes… gay or straight? I think the answer is that we shift our mind’s criteria for gender when we watch a film or listen to a love song or read a novel. We all blithely switch genders in our minds, the better to identify with the vocalist or character. Reading novels, listening to music, or watching films, we consciously or unconsciously switch the gender mix to that which delights us the most.

We want to identify with the singer of the song or the one being sung to, so we make the genders “right” in our minds. For example, there’s a wonderful song by Tegan and Sara,I Know I Know I Know. I first heard it as soundtrack music during a very heterosexual moment on Grey’s Anatomy. No surprise the that what I first heard in that music was a girl singing a bittersweet love song to her boyfriend. Then I bought the song from iTunes and I played it over and over. It became easy for me to hear the song as a girl singing to her girlfriend, and suddenly I could enter the music as opposed to be outside the music, listening in. And hey—it wasn’t until several months later that I found out that Tegan and Sara are sisters… and they’re both lesbians! Sometimes, art is so powerful that it trumps gender as a pathway to love and romance in our hearts and minds.

Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo can make all our hearts flutter. So can Justin Bond in a gown or a tux... or both! Gender ambiguity—when it’s safely positioned onstage or up on a movie screen—is and always has been sexy to damn near all of us, no matter what our gender might be. All of our desires are being tickled. So how’s that happening? What is it that’s signaling sexual attraction to an audience with such a wide range of gender identities and sexual desires? I think the answer is that WALL•E is butch, and EVE is femme, two genders defined by the expression of strong, respectful, sexual desire.

Butch and Femme are sexy dance steps with unlimited variations. Butch is gallant, femme is gracious. Butch is hail and hardy, femme has wicked cool wiles. Butch is handsome. Femme is pretty. Butch/Femme is all about relating to each other like ladies and gentlemen—no matter our genitals. Butch is Stanley Kowalski, femme is Blanche DuBois. But in a production called Belle Reprieve, Stanley was played to perfection onstage by handsome, butch Peggy Shaw. Beautious drag queen Bette Bourne played Blanche. They were perfectly butch and femme.

Butches can be dominant or submissive, strong or weak, honorable, or complete rats. So can Femmes. Butch and Femme have nothing to do with who makes more money. And no one in real life is a hundred percent butch. No one is a hundred percent femme. Like everything else about our identities, butch and femme are all a matter of degree based on preference, comfort and choice.
There’s no perfection in the dance, there’s only the totality of self-expression and how that self-expression dovetails with someone else’s self-expression. When people play with that consciously, it’s wonderful fun. At its best, Butch/Femme becomes an erotic expression of “This is how I’m femme, and it makes me really happy that I delight the butch in you.” And, “This is how I’m butch, and it makes me really happy that I delight the femme in you.”

There is no singular archetype of Butch and Femme. The belief in the notion that there’s a right way to do Butch and a right way to do Femme begins perhaps with mythological, fictional, or cultural archetypes, which over time become accepted unconsciously as “normal” in a given culture. For example: weak, defenseless or predatory femme is imposed as “normal” behavior for females in a heteronormative, sexist culture. Strong, stalwart, and silent or brutal butch is imposed as “normal behavior for males in a heteronormative, sexist culture. Like in campy Hello, Dolly.

Yes, EVE is pertly streamlined. EVE’s eyes literally sparkle and dance. EVE giggles, for heaven’s sake. EVE is kick-ass strong and powerful. EVE is performing Femme. WALL•E is rugged and protective and shy and loyal. WALL•E is a sensitive little thing, held together by sheer will and rubber bands. WALL•E is performing Butch.

Once we begin to look at the characters as Butch and Femme—not male and female—we can assign to them any gender we like. Sure, the film can be about a boy robot and a girl robot. But how about EVE as a sweet femme boy robot, like performer/chanteuse extraordinaire, Justin Bond. And WALL•E is a sweet butch girl robot, with a heart of solid gold, like performer/chanteuse extraordinaire Lea Delaria? You could watch the film with that interpretation of the characters. WALL•E and EVE are best mates and they love each other. They hold hands. That works.

When the only gender clues present in the film belong to the genders butch and femme, then the movie could be about two boy robots—a younger version of the gay male couple played by Nathan Lane and Robin Williams in the film, The Birdcage. Fierce femme and strong gentle butch, both of ‘em boys. WALL•E works just as well with that configuration of robots—if you want it to.

You’re the audience. You get to decide.

This isn’t Disney’s first whack at the cultural gender binary. Mu-Lan is a film about a female to male cross-dresser. And what about Pinocchio? An animated block of wood spends an entire movie trying to become a “real” boy—aided by a blue fairy and an asexual cricket. And what gender exactly was Ariel (a non-gender specific name, by the way) when that little mermaid had a fishy tail? Did she go through a gender change when she grew legs which (presumably) had something between them so she could be a “real” girl? And getting down to basics, can anyone prove that Mickey and Minnie Mouse are male and female?

All in all, I’m delighted to see Pixar/Disney’s latest blow to the binary gender system. I’ll go back and watch WALL•E a couple of times this summer, I’m sure. It’s a brilliant film on many levels. I bet you—no matter your gender or sexual orientation—you’ll fall in love with how those robots fall in love with each other. I sure did.

This bothers me a little bit.
It is stated quite explicitly by the creators that the robots are male and female.
I enjoy your books and support the idea that binary gender roles aren't for everyone and that they ought to be messed about with but,

"He's a guy robot and she's a girl and he just falls completely in love with her." -Andrew Stanton, creator writer and director of WALL-E, in a Disney Movie Surfers interview.

Also, read any of the WALL-E books. They all use he and she. Never it.

WALL-E is clearly male and EVE is clearly female. Like the poster before me said, trying to twist what is clear into your agenda isn't fair to the fans. As a huge fan of the relationship between these two characters, I'm quite offended. Please, with all due respect for the time you put into this article, do your research next time.

Just wanted to add my voice, for what it's worth, and say that I loved this very much, both as a WALL-E fan and on a more personal level, and I think you're on the right track throughout. Thank you for posting this.

I have to comment to the people above me, that this is only a matter of fan interpretation/understanding and doesn't reflect negatively on the original creation.

For that matter, how can the idea of Wall-E and EVE being same gendered or genderless be negative at all? It does nothing to change the nature of their relationship or the feelings as presented between them.

"Like the poster before me said, trying to twist what is clear into your agenda isn't fair to the fans."

Right, because a tongue-in-cheek discussion on gender theory and how it's expressed in the film completely affect the film's actual narrative and therefore impacts fan experience in any way. Good job, guys.

Anyway, to Ms. Bornstein (if you even prefer 'Ms.'), I think there's a bit you're overlooking here such as how 'Wally and Eve' are very much gendered names, as is the squared-off torso and more streamlined curvy torso that tends to reflect male and femaleness. (Also, er, Ariel has breasts. Biologically she's very female.) But playing with this idea is fascinating.

And I'm going to read this place religiously, because I loved 'Hello, Cruel World' and I'm eager to get my hands on some of your more academic stuff.

Yikes. I just thought it would be fun to share a time when I felt good by re-imagining art, and to analyze how I did that.

For the folks who are offended by this post, I'm sorry you're offended. Here's the deal...I'm sure the film makers had it in mind to make a male/female relationship out of WALL•E and EVE (their names, btw, not Wally and Eve -- so neither masculine nor feminine names. sorry, couldn't resist). Given the beauty of that film, its sweetness and depth of love and courage etc etc etc, the ONLY way to fully enter the film for lesbians and gay men and to some extent trannies, is to mess with their genders in our heads. Queerts spend time listening to mostly heterosexual music. So, in order for us to enter a love song, we have to switch the pronouns. It's a phenomenon not too many people write about, so I thought I'd write about it, using WALL•E as an example.

Look at it this way: let's say you define your sexuality as heterosexual. What if we lived in a world where all the love songs and films were queer? You'd learn to do some mental gymnastics in order to enter the art. And that's what art's all about anyway, isn't it? How far your audience or viewers can identify with the art, or allow it to strike a personal chord? The good stuff does that... anyone can find their way into a good work of art. It wasn't made for just one kind of person.

Lastly, thank you to the folks who brought up the "how is this essay gonna hurt fans and film-maker?" I sure hope it doesn't do that, too! When I wrote this essay, I honestly thought I was praising the film makers for being so darned inclusive with their art.

Thanks for your interest, and for getting me to clarify things. Let me know if it's still offensive to anyone, or if it's even murkier.

Well, obviously that's not their real names but they're derivative of real human names. :) So I think that still stands as part of the gendered nature, but seeing as we're redefining whether names are somehow 'male' or 'female' all the time that might not even count in 10 years.

Also, you are a freaking saint to explain all that so kindly and patiently. <3

Thanks for your interest, and for getting me to clarify things. Let me know if it's still offensive to anyone, or if it's even murkier.

~sighs~ Not offensive (or maybe I'm just too tired of this to be offended any more), just... the same binary stuff by a different name, really. Man/woman, male/female, masculine/feminine, yin/yang, butch/femme: what's the difference, really? You still have to have one of each, you still have a binary, you still have the same song and dance about complementarity, and balancing, etc, ad nauseam.

It just makes me... depressed. And really hoping my semi-sexuality could just turn into full asexuality.

Kate --- I know you won't but just in case ... don't let naysayers here stifle your thoughts and creativity.

(I'm worried by reading "I just thought it would be fun to share a time..." and the unspoken "...but I guess I won't do that anymore.")

Creativity relies on taking what is canonical and asking "What if?" and I loved reading your "What if?"

Also, in your follow up, I laughed because, as a heterosexual male, I would listen to the Pet Shop Boys and have to do mental gymnastics to gender-switch the songs(not hard for some songs that were written "hetero-friendly").

As someone who had interpreted Wall-E as male and Eve as female when I saw the film, I really enjoyed reading an alternative take on that and was nodding all the way through your entry. (I'm sending this link to my partner, who also liked the movie but did complain about finding it heteronormative, so I think she'll enjoy this too.) Please don't listen to the people working themselves into a frenzy about some fun speculation.

I think what Kate is asking on one level is how much of gender/sexuality is "fill in the blank"/code switching? For all of us that is--not just queers.

I noticed a poster said the robot was "biologically" female, which is interesting. If a robot has breasts, what are they for, biologically speaking? It seems to me to be pretty subversive to think about the fact that a robot's breasts could be there for aesthetics and pleasure instead of "just" biology. Or are they only there for heteronormative repro-culture continuity? Every part of our bodies has multiple significations--some significations have a lot more social/cultural traction and power than others (which can be messed up and oppressive). Are my breats just the means to a "biological" end, or are they, as my partner calls hers, "pleasure mounds," that reflect her erotic autonomy?

We all narrow our own views of our bodies and potential so much when we reduce them to their "biological" significance for the sake of a heternormative consistency that stifles even heterosexuals.

If people are interested in cyborg/robot and gender/sexuality theorizing, Judith Halberstam and Donna Haraway write about it quite a bit.

Butch/femme, male/female, Windows/Mac, metal/plastic... I can't decide which of them is emacs and which vi, though.

(However, I suddenly wish I had the time and skill to write a spin-off with the characters E-MAC and VI.)

I had another take on the binary; until I saw EVE, I wasn't reading WALL-E as masculine because rectangular (I expect that in machines) but feminine because a home-maker. And then EVE appears as James Bond, shoot on sight, mission is everything, deep-freeze the emotional reaction male, and distinctly convex. It was only comparing their voices that nailed down the male/female that Pixar surely meant.

OK, I was a bit hesitant when I came across your article - sometimes I find interpretations of pop-culture to be exactly opposite to my own perception, and phrased in a way that insults those who see it in any other fashion. But not only is your essay respectful and considerate, I find myself agreeing as I read it. I sensed while watching the movie that the creators intended a male and female dynamic, but by the simple fact that they're ungendered machines, it's hardly a definitive label. IMHO, the simplicity and expressiveness of WALL*E made it a figure that any human could relate to, regardless of gender, age, status or nationality. That's the beauty of it - any one of us can sympathize with those adorable robots, because they become whoever we want them to be. It seems pointless, and rather silly, for alleged 'fans' to insist that there is only one interpretation of these archetypes when their very nature makes them accessible to everyone.

TL;DR: Thank you for your excellent post, it was both thought-provoking and well-written. Also, to ^Overlithe, what's wrong with a binary? I don't agree that there should be enforced standards of what constitutes such, but if there were only sameness, there would be no dance... and I love that analogy, by the way. :)

OK, I was a bit hesitant when I came across your article - sometimes I find interpretations of pop-culture to be exactly opposite to my own perception, and phrased in a way that insults those who see it in any other fashion. But not only is your essay respectful and considerate, I find myself agreeing as I read it. I sensed while watching the movie that the creators intended a male and female dynamic, but by the simple fact that they're ungendered machines, it's hardly a definitive label. IMHO, the simplicity and expressiveness of WALL*E made it a figure that any human could relate to, regardless of gender, age, status or nationality. That's the beauty of it - any one of us can sympathize with those adorable robots, because they become whoever we want them to be. It seems pointless, and rather silly, for alleged 'fans' to insist that there is only one interpretation of these archetypes when their very nature makes them accessible to everyone.

TL;DR: Thank you for your excellent post, it was both thought-provoking and well-written. Also, to ^Overlithe, what's wrong with a binary? I don't agree that there should be enforced standards of what constitutes such, but if there were only sameness, there would be no dance... and I love that analogy, by the way. :)

And yet; a corporate product. I was thinking of WALL*E as some copy of 16bit Windows perking slowly along in the middle of a business process, undocumented, almost unknown, and yet irreplaceable. `A robot there were few to know, And very few to love.'

Oh Kate, this is yet another example of you rocking my academic-gender theory-pop-culture-animated world!
:D

"You’re the audience. You get to decide."

EXACTLY!!!

...I don't know why people are getting so "bent out of shape" over your article? What's the big deal? ...Although I ask these questions in a tongue-in-cheek manner... I know what (part of) the "deal" is: the film-makers intended the characters to be a boy & girl and some people want to adhere to that strict interpretation...in a similar vein, many people want to adhere to essentialist notions of sex and gender (now I'm not accusing people in favor of the former being advocates for the latter,) but challenging artist-constructed (and/or socially-constructed) "static" elements like these can be an offensive, threatening, or just plain scary thing for people to handle)... OK, I get it...if this definition of the characters works for ya, and/or that dichotomy of sex and gender makes sense to you, that's all just fine and dandy ...we're all different and entitled to our opinions...but can't we just agree to disagree without being nasty or mean about it; rather venomous language is a bit unnecessary isn't it?

Live and let live:
"WALL•E and EVE are best mates and they love each other. They hold hands. That works."

...Maybe I'm too sensitive; but just like the "personal is political," I guess (for me) the "animated is political (& personal)"

:)

Nevertheless, sexual and gender ambiguity abound in a myriad of films: Calamity Jane, Notes on a Scandal, and Fried Green Tomatoes to name a few (in the "lesbian films" genre)....or maybe they're not lesbian films ...?...
But isn't that the beauty of film/media... and gender, sexuality, sex, and any other human characteristics for that matter: they all have the potential to be oh so wonderfully fluid and malleable!

<3

And P.S. (Kate): I love your commentary on "queering" the often heterocentric, heterosexist, transphobic (racist, sexist, etc, etc, etc) media around us...I've even queered a Baptist sermon a time or two!

What a thought-provoking entry! I find it fascinating how our society relies so heavily on binaries, and upon specific binaries at that. Upon further reflection, I remember absolutely nothing in WALL-E (which I loved, loved, loved) that referred to the title character as a "he" or EVE as a "she." Yet we impose those norms (and by we, I mean me, and likely a lot of other people, too).

By the way, I am intrigued by your mention of the 15 different genders found in human nature. What are these, or where could I read more about these? I've never known about more than five!

but unlike the other traits you mention, aren't those particular traits associated with the opposite archetypes?

I think one of the strengths of the movie is that the "female" character is so competent and tough, and the "male" character is so compassionate. But this is a strength because it makes them more like real people and less like stereotypes.

oo cool! thanks, i haven't seen wall-e yet and now i am excited. like you were saying, i always end up switching pronouns in names, etc, to be able to relate to things more (like once i totally convinced myself that the couple in "the notebook" was really a lesbian couple...). so yay, i'm excited.

Just to put it out there... but I believe Wall-E is assumed to be of a male 'gender'. Perhaps you missed the connection between Wall-E and Wally (short for Wallace, Wallensa, etc). Generally a male name...
food for thought.

I, too, assumed WALL*E was male, but that can be a little subversive, too-- if we go by the name, then ALL WALL*E models are male, and ALL EVE models are female, and any heterosexual relationships would necessarily be interspecies.

Awesome post. I love the idea of "butch" and "femme" completely divorced from chromosomal gender. And whether the artists intended it or not, I think you're completely on point that the movie works as an exploration of gender roles.

You said above:

"let's say you define your sexuality as heterosexual.
What if we lived in a world where all the love songs
and films were queer? You'd learn to do some mental
gymnastics in order to enter the art."

I'm not sure if this works as a dissent to your point or proof of it, but: I really disliked Zoolander when I first saw it. Then my son pointed out that the female lead was totally irrelevant to the story (and unbelievable as a love interest). Then later I heard a radio interview with the author of "The Celluloid Closet," the light came on, and I realized it was a gay love story. I'm pretty unequivocally straight, but I can respond to love regardless of gender; I liked that movie a *lot* more when I could see and empathize with a believable love interest (even if I weren't personally interested).

Okay, several folks have commented on the names of those cute li'l robots, saying WALL*E is Wally, a male name, and EVE is Eve, a female name. I tried to cover that possibility in my post above by saying,

"Is it because of their names? The names sound like Wally and Eve, but their names are very specifically WALL•E and EVE, all in capital letters—because both names are acronyms for each robot’s prime directive and function...."

To clarify further: WALL•E's "real" name would be Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class, and EVE's "real" name would be Extraterrestrial Vegetation Extractor. In acronym forms, their names sound gendered, but in reality? Not so much.

And someone asked about the 15 genders. Good question. I'd heard about that one for a long time, but never saw the specific scientific reference. So, I figured I'd do some serious googling and if I was wrong, I'd admit it.

Well, it turns out I'm wrong. I admit it. Seems there are 18, not 15 chromosomal genders. The book reference is "Clinical Genetics in Nursing Practice" By Felissa R. Lashley. How about that!

Trolls are cowards. Where are your blogs?! I want to go cast aspersions on your witty back-and-forths by taking every metaphor literally and taking umbrage at everything you say. I want to invade your spaces and spoil your fun.

Come on. Where do you write? Stop hiding behind pseudonyms and own up to your ignorance and bigotry.

This was an excellent article, Kate. Obviously Disney has a fine line they've got to walk, what with family organisations getting up in arms over things like the "SFX" in the Lion King and Aladdin's "secret message." I'm sure the film's creators had an interest in being clear about the genders of both characters, but I think Pixar has a knack for picking people with a greater sensitivity to deeper human nature. How many of us have accepted clearly defined genders for things we feel may not be so clear?

And I have to go back to it; what "agenda?" Mainstreaming GLBTQ lifestyles so that people don't think they're freaks and murder them randomly out of misplaced hate? Yeah, terrible, I know. "Agenda" is just neo-con code for "anti-homophobia." You fool no one, trolls.

I too enjoyed this article, and had been thinking something along the same lines. I recommended the film to a lesbian friend (who had been very conflicted about coming out), and then panicked that I was forcing a hugely heteronormative experience upon her. But then I started thinking about the extent to which the film shows gendered behaviour as a media construct(the robots only behave as they do because they have watched *Hello Dolly*), as well as the ways in which kick-ass EVE and sweet WALL-E undermine certain gender stereotypes and began to see it would be possible to offer a very different reading of the film, which I'm glad to have seen here. One addition -- the film also separates biological reproduction from human sexuality in an interesting way. It's clear that the babies on the spaceship can't have been born to the passengers, who are bound to their chairs and have never touched another human...

Wonderful. I shall enjoy this film so much more the next time I watch it! It may have been a tongue-in-cheek article, but being made newly aware of prejudices and assumptions is really valuable, so thank you.

I find it either funny or sad how people have commented to freak out. Yes, how DARE anyone suggest that these two completely de-sexualized cartoon robots could have been queers?! Sigh.

I loved the movie, and while this straight girl bought into the heterosexual-story-of-hand-holding, I also enjoy picking that apart and thinking about why I took it that way. I think it is totally valid and fascinating to re-imagine it from another angle.

Music is a great metaphor for the inclusiveness of "WALL-E". (Woohoo Tegan and Sara!) We make all kinds of assumptions about certain songs, but many of them are not gender-specific and could apply to any relationship.

Musician, a few others have alluded to the robots' names as a clue, too. I have to say that I don't think this puts a damper on Kate's assessment that the story could be whatever we make it--not at all. It's never been uncommon for gender-variant folks to adopt a nickname that was either gender-neutral or not conforming to whatever they were assigned at birth. I grew up next door to a girl named Michelle who could beat me hands-down in arm wrestling and climb trees twice as fast as me, and she always played boy characters in our games. (In fact, she often wanted me to play the girl, and that's how my first kiss and the next fifty or so happened.) She went on to date boys when we were adolescents and is married to a guy now. She seems perfectly happy to identify as a woman. But guess what her nickname was when we were kids--and what I call her to this very day? Mike. Sometimes Mikey, to be affectionate. She'd punch your face in if you called her Michelle.

I'm only nearing thirty now, but I've read a lot about the "old-school" butch/femme culture often seen in gay bars of the mid- and early twentieth century. By both fictional and non-fiction accounts, there were plenty female-assigned folks in suits and plenty of male-assigned ones in makeup and/or dresses, and plenty of those folks had nicknames that conformed more with their gender presentation than what was on their birth certificates. Bobby might be lighting Daisy's cigarette, Mel and Peaches are dancing cheek-to-cheek, and Joe and Lenny are shooting pool while Betty and Molly cheer from the sidelines. But is everyone with "boy" names a boy? And is everyone with "girl" names a girl? Couldn't say for sure, but in that setting, probably not. So while I'm not arguing that Wall-E and Eve HAD to be a butch girl and a femme boy or two girls or two boys, I could certainly see how the names are but suggestions, not definitions.

Heck, I signed this comment with the name everyone has called me--save for my parents when I was in trouble--since I was a toddler. Yes, it's short for something else. But is the name on my driver's license Nicholas, as one would generally assume for a Nick--or Nicole?

I think it's obvious that the makers (or at least most of them) of WALL-E thought of WALL-E as a boy and EVE as a girl and that was what was intended to be conveyed to the audience.

HOWEVER, I think part of the universal appeal of this movie does have something to do with the gender ambiguity of the protagonists. I think a lot of the classics in children's movies and literature had this quality like Mary Martin's Peter Pan, Harriet the Spy, Spirited Away. My hypothesis is that a piece of art that effectively taps into the childhood psyche is unconcerned with clear-cut gender differences. Why this is, I have not totally thought through...

I went to see this with a straight male. upon leaving, he kept talking about how his mind was blown that pixar would make a movie with two ungendered or homo(a)sexual robots as its romantic focus. he really didn't get how I (and most people) could read them as masculine/feminine. maybe he's been reading too much theory, or maybe you're on to something...

I haven't seen the movie, but I look forward to seeing it and watching it as 2 little lesbo robots find love and adventure, or whatever it's about.

That said, regardless of history, I dislike the constant reinforcement of the butch/femme dichotomy, and the pervasiveness with which it's expected in couples of the same gender. I'd rather just let every couple perform whatever role the want, all or none or anything in between, without feeling like there's some opposite gender-performing person whom they are "supposed" to be attracted to. Still, I acknowledge that butch/femme relationships exist and shouldn't be ignored, I just hate when they're percieved to be "normal" and expected within queer relationships.

And finally, I loved Tegan and Sara's music when I was interested in dudes, and I found out they were gay at the same time I started dating women, creating a pleasant surprise and a increased love for everything they create.

Please don't apologize for art critiques. Art is created specifically for varied interpretation, and I really enjoyed this article, so please, interpret away!

I'm sick of it too! You're not the only one. As for this robot thing... I saw a blurb for this entry on feministing so I got excited, but after watching the trailers I don't think I could actually watch the film.

I thought this was great!
Gender and species assigment is so subtly cued that it's easy for us to say 'that is a boy'.. when really it is nothing of the sort.
It's like the stories you hear of the people who enjoy humping their bicycle, they've anthromorphised this inanimate object and are now dating it!
What's even *more* amusing though is the fury of the above posters at your questioning the implicit gender assignment they've already made.
It's like they brought home a supermodel and OH! she has a dick.
I work in robotics and even occasionally talk to them (WHY AREN'T YOU WORKING?!). I may have to wink next time :p

Great article!
When I saw the movie I was struck by the use of geometry as gender-identifier more than the name or "voice" of the robots: Wall-E and the worker bots on the ship mostly had boxy, utilitarian (masculine) forms, while EVE and the beauty-bots were sleek and curvier (feminine). Of course, the only way to tell a robot's gender is to check it's power supply. does it have a plug or a socket? Being solar-powered, Wall-E and his cohorts bypassed this and were truly gender-less, leaving only the butch/femme paradigm where their input/output parts would go.
But why stop at these bots? Aren't C3PO and R2D2 also living out butch/femme roles in a universe where they are both referred to by masculine pronouns?

This post and subsequent discussion simply makes me more excited to see the film when it *finally* comes out in Australia next week. Kate, I'll definitely be thinking of you when I go into the theatre.

I figured this post was as good a place as any to leave a note: the RSS and Atom feeds of your blog seem to be broken. I read via RSS 2.0 (on my LiveJournal friends page) and had no idea that you'd updated in the past few months! Any chance of this being fixed soon?